Elizabeth Hand quotes - page 2
I'm an utterly orthodox feminist in the political or social sense: I want equal rights for women, period, and I vote that way. I support social programs that help women and children; I'm pro-choice, in favor of anything that makes it easier for women to raise their kids, with or without men, in conventional or unconventional family units.
But do I think the world would be a better place if it were run solely by women? No; not any more than I think a solely patriarchal model is an ideal.
Elizabeth Hand
I worked at the Smithsonian for a number of years. I had a very low-level job. I didn't have much responsibility, but I did have a Smithsonian ID badge that gave me access to all of the museums on the mall, and also the National Gallery of Art. In those days, you could go anywhere, which you can't do now. You could get in behind the scenes and wander along these tunnels. There is a scene in "Prince of Flowers" where the characters are in the Paleontology Department of the Museum of Natural History where they really do have this Raiders of the Lost Ark-type vast space filled with all of these unopened cartons. ... I was really entranced with the idea of living in a museum. In Winterlong there are two parallel storylines and the one for Raphael takes place among this guild or tribe of curators who live in the ruins of the Smithsonian Institution.
Elizabeth Hand
Faeries might have been wandering around in Victorian England. I can believe that. But it is a more difficult thing to think that they might be wandering around Camden Town now.
It is more of a jump, but I find that more interesting in many ways. The irruption of the supernatural into our world is a much more enticing notion to explore than the same thing happening in some past time, or in a wholly imaginary world.
Elizabeth Hand
I liked being alone. Once when I was fourteen, walking in the woods, I stepped from the trees into a field where the long grasses had been flattened by sleeping deer. I looked up into the sky and saw a mirror image of the grass, black and yellow-gray whorls making a slow clockwise rotation like a hurricane. As I stared the whorl began to move more quickly, drawing a darkness into its center until it resembled a vast striated eye that was all pupil, contracting upon itself yet never disappearing. I stared at it until a low buzzing began to sound in my ears. Then I ran.
I didn't stop until I reached my driveway. When I finally halted and looked back, the eye was still there, turning. I never mentioned it to anyone. No one else ever spoke of seeing it.
Elizabeth Hand
Julian was into black magic. Well, okay-he never called it that. But something to do with the dark arts. "Magick” with a K, that Aleister Crowley bullshit. So fucking pretentious. Most of Crowley's quote-unquote magick was just a way of getting laid-he was a total con man. If you can read his stuff with a straight face, you're a stronger woman than me.
Elizabeth Hand
